Scurvy's dilemma (LayShad)
“Heavy is the head that wears the crown.” Scurvy remembered Nivi telling him something like that once. He’d thought, at the time, that it was a bit silly – if you had a crown, you could do whatever you wanted, including tossing the bloody thing overboard. Now he knew better. Yeah, as ultimate leader of the bloodthirsty band of pirates, the YDU, Scurvy knew. He’d spent the evening arguing with his broken animatronic parrot. First of all, Pete had gotten the navigation system to admit that they were in Nigeria, not Barbados as Scurvy had insisted. Flexible to a fault, Scurvy told everyone that Nigeria practically was in the Caribbean and so they were, more or less, in the right place for piracy. This failed to satisfy the parrot. It insisted that Nigeria was completely different. Scurvy kept telling the pirates his cheering expectation that soon, they’d start up some good looting and pillaging all over the Caribbean, only to have the mutinous parrot contradict him. Contradict him, if you can believe it, in a squawk that made Scurvy flinch. Some of the band sided with their leader, others with the parrot. Paint, with more politics than geography, tried to side with both, saying that he saw no reason that Nigeria couldn’t be in the Caribbean if it liked it but that he was sure the parrot had good reason to say it wasn’t. Only when Scurvy glared at him, did he remember to end his comment with a tentative “Arrr?” Then there was the problem of money. Things had started out well. When they landed in Barbados, they’d had plenty and drunk lots of bad rum in lots of different, unsavory bars, boasting of their exploits and singing pirate songs. Most of the locals hadn’t understood a word of it, but they drank and sang anyhow. It had been great fun, but now the money was almost gone. The parrot had settled on them selling some of Captain Jack’s equipment in order to pay for future binges (even though it was animatronic, it drank almost as much as a person), but Scurvy wasn’t sure that was such a good idea. They’d stolen the ship, fair and square, and sure, all those things now belonged to them, but when he thought of Captain Jack happening to find them, he felt sick to his stomach. (It wasn't sea sickness; real pirates don't get sea sick. And his beard itched and his eye patch kept slipping and the peg leg chafed like the devil.) He wanted to contact Nivi and ask her to send them money, but the dreky parrot kept pointing out that real pirates wouldn’t have a wealthy elf wiring them money all over the world. How did pirates in the trideos handle these situations? He’d tried bellowing and ordering the parrot to walk the plank but nobody seemed inclined to make one. It had gotten so bad, that his orders to hoist the mainsail and to swab the poop deck (he just liked saying “poop deck”) didn’t even cause the confused scurrying around that they used to. He wasn’t even sure which sail was the mainsail, but he figured pirate captains should lead by the strength of their lungs, not by facts. He spent the morning grumpily wondering if he should arrange to surrender to Captain Jack. Dangerous, bloodthirsty pirates surrendered all the time, didn’t they? Maybe Captain Jack would send them money and answer some of these problems. They could try to steal the ship again later, once they figured out where Jamaica was.